Sinister Serpent: The Cleansing, #3

By Robert A. Brown and John Wooley

Some secrets are best left buried...

As The Cleansing trilogy roars to a conclusion, trouble and terror assail WPA Folklore Project writer Robert A. Brown from all sides, boiling up in a cauldron of horror that threatens to destroy both him and his extraordinary "seventh sense."

 

This concluding volume of the three-book series, following Seventh Sense and Satan's Swine, finds Robert on the trail of eldritch secrets thought to be long buried in the remote town of Mackaville, Arkansas, a place with a shocking past that Robert finally unearths — to his everlasting horror.

 

Set in 1939 and told via letters sent to his friend John Wooley, Sinister Serpent completes the trilogy that has earned praise from critics and readers for its vivid evocation of the best of the weird-pulp literature of the '30s.

 

Will Robert Brown and his seventh sense survive a final all-out, mind-numbing attack?

Praise For The Cleansing Trilogy

 

"The Cleansing will bear mentioning in the same breath with Lovecraft and Robert Bloch and Robert E. Howard, with as compelling a voice as any such Architects of the Weird."— Michael H. Price, author of the Forgotten Horrors series

 

"…like entering a time machine and reading a great pulp magazine from the 1930's!"— Bruce Hershenson, dealer and publisher

 

"Out of place, stranded, surrounded by secrets — you had me at creepy little town....Writers have been telling horror stories through letters since Mary Shelley set quill to paper. Robert A. Brown and John Wooley bring back that quaint old object, the typewriter, and find it haunted by history." — Ron Wolfe, author of Hellraiser and Knights of the Living Dead

• Language: English
• Publisher: Babylon Books
• Release date: Jul 4, 2020
• ISBN: 9781948263689

Robert A. Brown

Robert A. Brown has spent most of his working life in public education, serving as both a reading specialist and a principal, but he has also authored several nonfiction pieces dealing with the Great Depression and its popular culture, including western movies and the so-called "Spicy" magazines of the period. His work includes a piece on the legend of cowboy-movie star Tom Mix tcommissioned by the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum. An internationally known collector of such nostalgic items such as movie paper, radio premiums, and pulp magazines, Brown supplied the art and wrote the text for Kitchen Sink Press's popular trading card series Spicy: Naughty '30s Pulp Covers and Spicy: More Naughty '30s Pulp Covers, which quickly became sold-out collector's items. Brown initiated what became The Cleansing, writing letters on authentic period stationery to his old friend Wooley, using his deep knowledge of the 1930s to portray himself as the WPA employee beset by rural horrors who became The Cleansing's protagonist.

Book preview

Praise for The Cleansing

"Out of place, stranded, surrounded by secrets — you had me at creepy little town. Even better: the idea of a pulp horror story set in the 1930s era of those wonderfully garish magazines — Weird Tales, especially — where it might have appeared with a Hannes Bok cover of cats and witches, snakes, dark woods. The Cleansing delivers all this, plus the taboo fascination of reading somebody else’s mail. Writers have been telling horror stories through letters ever since Mary Shelley set quill to paper.  Robert A. Brown and John Wooley bring back that quaint old object, the typewriter, and find it haunted by history." 

Ron Wolfe, author of Hellraiser and Knights of the Living Dead

...like entering a time machine and reading a great pulp magazine from the 1930’s!

Bruce Hershenson, memorabilia dealer and publisher

"The Cleansing will bear mentioning in the same breath with Lovecraft and Robert Bloch and Robert E. Howard, with as compelling a voice as any such Architects of the Weird."

Michael H. Price, author of the Forgotten Horrors book series

Copyright © 2020 by Robert A. Brown and John Wooley

First edition by Babylon Books

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the authors, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

To the original OAFs — we were all crazy then. 

August 10, 1939

late Thursday night

Dear John,

I’ve been giving a lot of thought to the cats and Ma’s circle of friends and what it all might mean for me, and I’ve come to the inescapable conclusion that I’ve been put under some sort of protection from her and her old-lady friends. Rennsdale, who travels with me everywhere now, is a big part of it. Hell, for all I know every cat in town may be a part of it.

Do I know how it all works? Hell, no. But I’ve studied enough magic to know that witches have familiars, animals that spy for them and do their bidding. I hesitate to call Ma and Mrs. Davis witches, but if what Pat saw is true and they were all huddling over a pentagram, then I don’t know what other word would fit.

I’ve learned not to ask direct questions in this town, even of friends like those two old ladies. As Ma’s quick to intimate, there are things about Mackaville that no outsider is supposed to know. So the best thing for me to do is keep my mouth shut and my eyes and ears open, speaking only when I’m spoken to, occasionally asking a right question. Maybe I’ll find out enough to get to the bottom of it.

If I live that long.

And even if I don’t get to the bottom of it but manage to get out of here intact and breathing, maybe I’ll be making my exit from Mackaville sooner than the WPA schedule dictates. I’ve been knocking out interviews like a wild man, and if I keep it up I’ll have the assignment all wrapped up and tied with a shiny bow well before the October 1 deadline.

It’s tiring to keep pushing myself like this, but it’s good for me, too. When I’m out flying down the roads on the Indian, headed to see some ancient geezer or dame who’s happy for the company, I feel like I’ve left Old Man Black and the Gabbers and the crazy secrets of their town behind. Sure, I feel a little trepidation when I’m done and have to go back home, but I’ve gotten where a part of me is always listening acutely to what’s going on inside me, so I’m instantly alert to the very beginnings of any seventh-sense warning. I’ve learned to distinguish that sense from just the normal (again, if anything’s normal in this town) fish-out-of-water apprehension I often get when I return from my travels in the hills. I can’t help but think this heightened sensitivity is a very good thing.

The weather was hot as usual yesterday, and the big storm from a few days ago seems to have kept the humidity up, but the roads have dried nicely. I finished about four in the afternoon and headed to Foreman’s Drug Store to cool down with a cherry phosphate and see if there were any new pulps on the rack. His magazine shipments come in on Wednesdays, and in the past few days I’ve gone through my whole stack as well as Ma’s copy of Lost Horizon. Despite the energy I’m expending on these interviews and working with Pete, I’m often having trouble falling asleep, so I’ve been doing a lot of nocturnal reading. I make a call to Pat – who’s still quarantined – every evening after supper, and then I head for the room, with MacWhirtle usually padding along at my heels, and get lost in a pulp for a couple of hours – with my antenna always up, as I said.

I was sitting at the glass-topped counter with my drink and thumbing through the new issue of Adventure when Mr. Foreman eased onto a stool beside me. As usual, he was dressed immaculately. His white suit went with his white moustache and Van Dyke. He and I and the teenaged soda jerker were the only three souls in the place, and in a moment the kid sidled up and asked him, since business was slow, if he could make a call and check on his sick mother. Mr. Foreman nodded his assent.

We both watched the kid go into the phone booth and drop in his nickel. In a moment, he was talking animatedly and then, seeing that we were watching, he pulled the glass door shut.

Mr. Foreman grinned. I’ve never seen a boy quite that excited about talking to his ma, have you?

I grinned back. Nossir, I said. I liked Mr. Foreman. Maybe he was another of the few I could trust in this town. He always seemed congenial and ready to visit every time I came to the store, and I couldn’t help but remember he was one of the people who’d come out four-square for me after that fight with the Black twins they started in his drug store. (Damn, that seems like a long time ago.) Plus, he seemed to be a kind of intellectual, well-read and articulate.

I don’t know if I’ve told you about this, but in one of those weird coincidences, it turns out he and my dad were in the same division during the Great War. We figured that out a few weeks ago, and ever since, he’s been telling me war stories. As part of a machine gun team, he witnessed some grim and gruesome things. The one story of his I’ll never forget was about the horses they had with them.

Men were there because we enlisted or were drafted and we understood, at least a little, what could happen, he told me. But a horse expects you to take care of him. I can never get the screams of wounded horses out of my nightmares; after all these years, their cries still wake me up at night.

Just typing that gave me the chills all over again.

Yesterday, though, the war wasn’t on his mind. With a friendly smile, he asked, How’s the story-gathering coming along?

I’m getting some real pippins, I told him. Just got back from hearing an interesting yarn about some kind of spooks dropping rocks and stones on the roof of a house.

That’d be old man Tabor’s grandfather’s house, wouldn’t it? His lips turned up in another grin.

Yessir.

I figured. I’ve heard that story from him at least a dozen times. Other old-timers have told me the same thing happened to their grandparents and great-grandparents. They’ve been handed down for so many years that no one knows the truth, really.

I nodded.

Of course, it’s not your job to dig through and get the unvarnished truth. You’re just taking them down for posterity. And it’s not that I think they’re just made up. I suspect they’re just distorted. They get shared and passed on and embroidered and while there’s truth at the core, here’s a lot of other stuff, too. Everybody grabs that truth and stretches it a little, to cover their own ideas about things. He looked around conspiratorially and even though there was no one else in the place besides the preoccupied soda jerker in the closed phone booth, he lowered his voice. I don’t say this to many folks, but I ’spect you might be able to say the same thing about the Bible.

I guess he figured I wasn’t a holy roller or Baptist or anything, or maybe that I was more of a freethinker, being a writer and all and from outside the town. Plus he’d seen me at the Presbyterian church.

I wouldn’t be a bit surprised, I said.

John, I don’t know why I said what I said next. Maybe it was the way he seemed to accept me as his intellectual equal, another inquiring mind, but for some reason it just popped out.

I wonder, Mr. Foreman. Could you say the same thing about the Cleansing?

If he was shocked, he didn’t show it. You know about that, eh? he said, his eyes studying my face.

I’ve heard some things. But everybody’s awfully mysterious about it.

He nodded. It’s very mysterious. It’s mystery – and history. Then his eyes narrowed. Robert, I know you well enough to know that you’re a truth-seeker, just as I am. I will not advise you to stop that activity. What I will advise you to do is watch out for Jack Johnson. I don’t want you going phut.

About that time the bell rang on the door, and a middle-aged man in overalls walked in and looked around until he spotted us.

Mr. Foreman, he said in a kind of whine. Becky’s got th’ miseries again.

Mr. Foreman nodded. See you later, Robert, he said softly. Remember what I said.

In case you don’t recall your old man’s slang from the War to End War, Jack Johnson doesn’t just refer to that great colored boxer, but also to a huge enemy shell. And going phut is going out, buying the farm. Dying.

With that chipper thought, I headed over to Pete’s and put in another couple of hours. At the end of the day he slipped me a pair of aces. I made a protest, but he waved it aside.

Ain’t much, he said, but you’ve put in more hours these past coupla weeks, and I wanted you to have a little somethin’ extra.

Since Patricia is still quarantined with her grandma, the two bucks’ll probably go for pulps or a few stag trips to the picture show. Maybe I’ll treat Pete and Diffie to another journey to the movie house in Harrison.

Last Pat told me, Dr. Chavez said it was 50-50 for scarlet fever. Mrs. Davis still has a really sore throat and a little bit of a rash, but not a bad enough one, I guess, for the doc to make a sure-fire diagnosis. Also, it’s pretty rare for older people to get it, and it can really lay ’em low. I hope Mrs. Davis gets through it okay.

After receiving a lot of garden-variety stories about hardships and hearing a bunch of passed-down platitudes, I’ve recently run into a couple of pretty interesting tales. There was the one I told Mr. Foreman about, with the spooks dropping rocks on houses, which is apparently ingrained in the folklore around these parts. And then this morning, I ran up about ten miles through the hills north of here and listened to a Mrs. Ligntener tell me about her grandfather and how he used to hang witch balls on the east side of his house to keep the ghosts and bad spirits away. She claimed that these little glass balls actually captured the evil that was in the air and pulled all of it into the space within themselves, which is why her grandpa replaced them every so often, carefully burying the old ones in a special area. Her son, who apparently lives with her, was gregarious enough – as these mountain folks can be – but she was a stiff-backed old thing who wouldn’t even give me her first name (although it’s on the list the WPA sent me). She could tell a story, though. And she herself had a witch ball hanging on her porch, so the tradition continues.

When I finished the interview, it was about one o’clock. Not quite as warm as it’s been, and a beautiful day with a bright blue sky. It felt almost autumnal as I rode back toward town, Rennsdale on guard in the sidecar. As much as I was enjoying the ride, I suddenly felt the seventh sense kick in as I negotiated a sharp bend. I was on one of those improved roads, which meant it had a thin layer of gravel over asphalt or tar, which makes for a smoother surface and easier ride than I get on the dirt roads. I slowed the bike down, dug under Rennsdale and the tarp with one hand, and pulled my shotgun up within easy reach. I didn’t spot anything in the undergrowth to my right, which was sparse enough that I could see a good distance up the hill. On my left, the road, as usual, dropped off at least a hundred feet into the valley below.

The seventh sense still buzzed, but damned if I could see anything unusual. As I took another bend, I noticed there was what looked like a sheen of water on the road ahead, so I cut the engine down even more – then I slammed on the brakes and spun the bike around hard. The back wheel slid a little, but as soon as I had the Indian pointed back uphill I gave it the gas and burned the tires, lurching forward. Then I jammed the brake again and jerked to a stop.

Rennsdale wasn’t happy about the wild ride and laid her ears back, staring at me with what looked like disgust as I dismounted and pulled the bike onto its stand.

Sorry, I whispered to her as I lifted the shotgun from beside her. Couldn’t be helped.

Her expression remained unchanged, and I left her and walked to the section of the road covered by that sheet of liquid. Sure enough, it was just as I’d thought when the rainbow-hued spots had suddenly gleamed up at me, reflected in the sun’s light. It wasn’t water at all. Someone had dumped gallons of crankcase oil over the road. If I hadn’t stopped in time Rennsdale and I would’ve shot right over the edge.

I stood there looking at it and wondering what to do when I heard a car coming down the road behind me. I turned, ran back, and wheeled the bike around so it blocked the road. A red pick-up jounced to a stop, the same old Chevrolet that had been parked outside Mrs. Ligntener’s place. Her son – Richard, I remembered – climbed out and, shielding his eyes from the sun, took a moment to recognize me.

Hey, gov’ment man, he said. What the hell’s going on? He sounded unsure of whether he should be angry or not.

Come over here and take a look at this, Mr. Ligntener. Some fine citizen spilled a bunch of oil all over the road. You or I hit that, we’d do a brodie into the canyon.

He stood there, looking at the glittering, viscous mess, his thumbs hooked in his overall straps. Shee-it, he said finally. How in hell did that happen?

I was pretty sure why it happened. I’d already started mentally cursing myself for not taking an alternate route home, as I’d been doing. But the day was so nice, and I felt good...

Probably some fool with a barrel of oil in his truck took the curve too tight and spilled it, I said.

He spat in the roadway. Mebbe so. Shore can’t leave it like this, though.

You got a shovel in your truck? I was pretty sure he would; it’s standard equipment for folks who travel on dirt roads, and his farm was six miles off this improved one.

Shore, he said. Got two.

Well, the only thing I see to do is spread enough dirt on it to soak up the oil and make it safe to drive across.

He spat again. All right, he said, and headed back to his pick-up to get the shovels. For the next couple of hours, we worked together, digging dirt from beside the road and smoothing it onto the oil, after scraping as much liquid as we could off the left-hand side down the mountain. A car and another truck pulled up while we were at it and their drivers spelled us for a while until it was all done. There was a lot of not-so-good-natured conjecture about what idiot bastard had left that death trap behind, but among us we made a good job of it, and everybody finally went on his way.

By the time I made it to Ma’s it was time for dinner, and Dave and I were the only ones there. I entertained him with some of the stories I’d collected in the past couple of days. He always seems to enjoy the yarns and maybe even envies me a little for getting to do this for a living. Anyway, I told him about the spooks and the rocks and the witch balls, and by the time I got to my adventure on the roadway we were having a big slice of Ma’s pecan pie. (Of course, I didn’t let on to him that I knew the oil spill was no accident.)

Afterward, I drove over to Pete’s and helped him for just about an hour, until he closed up. I told him about the oil trap that I figured had been set for me and, during a momentary lull, wondered out loud which of my two nemeses might’ve done it.

I ain’t sayin’ anybody did it, he told me, as we stood just outside the door of his office, watching the street. But if somebody did, it’d likely be a Gabber. Sometimes when they want to do somethin’, they ain’t exactly direct, if you know what I mean.

I’d been thinking along those same lines. Maybe, after I’d given him – or, rather, his effigy – that warning stab, Old Man Black had decided to be a little bit more subtle and he or his sons had laid the trap. But then I figured maybe that was giving them too much brainpower credit. It could just as easily have been the Gabbers, who, if they really wanted me defunct for whatever reason, had never made any threats to my face about it. Quite the opposite. So while I wasn’t sure about whom to put my money on, I figured if push came to shove I’d go with the Gabbers.

After he shut off the Skelly sign and his pump lights, Pete invited me to stick around for a visit. Ever since I showed a preference for Cleo Cola, he’s kept a few in the pop box, and he offered me one, took a Coca-Cola himself, and turned on his radio. It’s a nice one, wood with a streamlined cabinet, and he’s very proud of it, always referring to it by its full name, the General Electric F-63.

The radio gets real good reception, but the news coming out of it tonight was not so good.

Because he’s hooked onto a big antenna on the roof of his building, he can pull in a lot of channels; lately, if conditions are right, he’s been able to tune into the short-wave stations. That’s what he was trying to do when the sheriff’s car pulled up into the bay and honked.

I stiffened, but Pete just laughed.

Relax, he said. He’s not here because of you. Sometimes he comes in and listens to the war news on the short-wave with me.

The bell on the spring rod above the door jingled, and in waltzed Sheriff Meagan. He nodded to us, fished a Mandalay Punch out of the box, flipped a nickel to Pete, and sat down in the only other chair in the little office.

What’s happened in Poland today? he asked Pete.

Don’t know yet, Sheriff, Pete responded. I’m just now trying to bring in a signal.

Sheriff Meagan nodded and reached into the front pocket of his uniform. It looked to me like he was fishing for a cigar, so I slid off Pete’s desk and went around to the glass case that held not only candy, but a small assortment of cigarettes and cigars. Pulling out a couple of rum-cured crooks, I went to the cash register, put in a dime, rang up the sale, and presented one of the cigars to the Sheriff.

Allow me, I said. I think I owe you one anyway.

The sheriff smiled as he took it. He looked a lot better when he wasn’t pissed off. Thanks, he said. He paused to light it, took a drag, and then held his Ronson out to me so I could fire up my own cigar.

Run into any more nekkid wild men, Brown? he asked, exhaling a stream of smoke. I gaped at him until he broke into laughter, slapping his knee.

No, I managed to say. No, sir.

I had no idea where he was going to take the conversation, but just then Pete picked up the BBC European Service and we turned our attention to the announcer, who was talking in a deep British accent about the latest developments around Danzig. That was the hot spot, I knew, the place where the fuse was going to be lit for the next war, and the news reader didn’t do much to dissuade me from that thought. Hitler and his Heinies had Danzig pretty much surrounded, and it seemed a foregone conclusion they would try to take it away from Poland. But, said the announcer, the Polish Legion was celebrating the 25th anniversary of its entry into the Great War, and the country’s top dog – whose name is a jawbreaker I won’t try to spell, but you know who I mean – was telling the crowd of perhaps 100,000 that violence inflicted by force must be resisted by force.

The sheriff shook his head at that. Those sons-of-bitches’ll be goin’ at it before the month’s out. Dammit.

There was a little more about it, including crowd noises and cheering, but Pete lost the signal then and clicked the radio off. All of us took the last swigs of our pop and set the empty bottles in the wooden carton.

Outside, a wind had come up, and for a moment it actually felt chilly, especially for August in Arkansas.

Sticking his hands in the pockets of his khaki slacks, Sheriff Meagan said, You know, men, I was over there in the Army of Occupation. I was just a kid, but I saw enough combat to find out those damned krauts are tough bastards. This is going to be a long-assed tough mother of a war.

Shaking his head, he said good night and got in his car. Pete and I watched him drive off and then each of us wordlessly left for home.

The chill stayed with me, lodged in my bones, all the way to Ma’s. And once I got here, I just couldn’t go to sleep; that’s why I decided to write you. I guess that’s also why this is a lot windier than my usual letter.

I’m going to try again now to get some shut-eye. It’s almost two a.m. I wonder what time it is in Danzig?

Your